Richard the Friendly Ghost
by hollygofightly
Summary: [SPOILER ALERT: S4] Richard thought his death had separated him from his living family forever, but then he makes contact with Tommy and everything changes. Featuring Julia, Emma, and everyone under the Harrows' roof at the end of s4. DISCLAIMER: I have never written anything "supernatural" before, so I have no idea how this is gonna go.
1. Prologue

It wasn't abnormal for Tommy to talk to himself—Emma had noticed him muttering their first day on the farm, laying prone on the floor of Richard's childhood bedroom and lording over his tiny tin troops. She wondered if he had any idea how similar he was to the room's original occupant, who as a child could spend hours playing make believe with or without her company. It was a bittersweet realization, given the somber cloud that swept over their home whenever her brother was brought up in conversation: ever since that night several months before when she had awoken with a cold chill and immediately known the truth, she was the only member of their makeshift family who refused to entertain the fantasy that he would ever keep his promise and walk back through the front door.

But there was something different about the boy's voice tonight, louder and clearer in tone than she had ever heard from him before. She clutched the laundry basket to her chest and followed the sound to his door.

"Tommy, who are you talking to?"

The boy's face swiveled brightly to meet hers. "He came back," he chirped, gesturing to a field of silvery luminescence just beyond the door. "I knew he only got lost."

* * *

The clatter above startled Julia from yet another labyrinth of melancholy. She dried her hands and went to the living room to check on Dad and Hubert, both fast asleep in their high-backed chairs, and let out a sigh of relief that her father had made it through another day without strangling the innocent fool for any number of unintended verbal missteps. But if they hadn't made the noise, then—

She took the stairs two at a time, heart pounding with worry for her adopted son and the sister-in-law who had quickly become so much more. "Tommy! Emma!" she called out, rushing from room to empty room until the little boy's was all that remained. She found the door wide open, Emma's laundry basket an upturned heap on the floor as the tall young woman, all color drained from her already milky cheeks, clasped a hand to her mouth and stared straight ahead.

"Emma, you look like you've seen a ghost—"

It was then that her eyes met his; she hit the floor before anyone could say another word.


	2. Chapter 1

"But wha—what are you doing here?"

Emma's hushed, insistent voice jolted Julia awake; she opened her eyes slowly, filled with unease, and found her head nestled into Emma's lap. For a moment, as she forced herself to control her muscles, she forgot what she was doing on the floor. And then she looked up.

He was standing before her, plain as day, with a hand hovering over Tommy's shoulder and that bashful look on his face that always made her heart melt. He was right there, and yet he wasn't: he was shimmering head to toe in an otherworldly silver glow, his form somehow insubstantial, as if he were being projected before her like a picture show. She recoiled reflexively, her mind rejecting the sheer impossibility of it all, but she found she couldn't turn away.

"I don't know. What happened."

His voice was soft and shaky, his lip quivering beside his mask—whatever was happening, it had not fixed the injuries that had plagued him since the war. She wanted to run to him, throw her arms around him and then slap him across the face for sending them away, but she stayed frozen in Emma's arms.

"Tommy," Julia coaxed the sound from her startled throat, "bath time."

"But I want to stay with Richard."

"Now. No buts."

The boy huffed and stomped his way from the room, leaving the women alone with apparition, or hallucination, or whatever he was.

"Okay," she said definitively, standing on unsure legs and crossing her arms over her chest. "Tell me what's going on."

* * *

There had been a light.

There had been the brightest, warmest light he could have possibly imagined. It had pulled him gently from what felt like a deep slumber and beckoned him forward, away from the beach and the boardwalk and into a cocoon of sunshine. He had stepped across the threshold as fearlessly as a good soldier would, and followed it all the way to the familiar farmhouse that held everything he had loved in life. _This has to be heaven_, and yet the mask still sat on his face and his throat still tickled even without blood pumping through his veins.

He couldn't be sure how much time had passed, but the Sagorskys seemed to have settled in. He watched them for several days, drifting through the walls of the house as effortlessly as a breeze through an open window. Tommy didn't talk much, no matter how much Hugh encouraged him; Paul didn't touch a drop of booze, though he knew Emma always kept a few bottles of bourbon tucked away (a holdover from their own father, no doubt). He was most thrilled to see his sister and his wife, fast friends as he knew they would be, sitting up talking into the wee hours with his niece on Emma's breast and an intimacy between them that he knew they both needed desperately. It calmed him to know that they were safe, and approaching some semblance of happiness and normalcy in his absence.

But somehow this wasn't enough to send him on his way to whatever the next world may be. At first, he had wondered if perhaps this was all that there was, if he was doomed to drift here, so close to them but so far away, for all eternity. Surely there would be others—his father and mother, Gerald, or maybe even Angela or Jimmy—keeping a watchful eye over this patchwork brood, as well. For the first few long, sleepless days, he searched for them around every turn, but he found only the living.

It felt strange and intrusive to watch them like this, though also comforting and familiar. It brought him back to the blinds, tucked away for days on end with a careful eye on his target. He had excelled at rationing his energy and whittling away the hours with little but his thoughts for company. The only difference now was that he was alone even standing so close to them, even as he sat so near to his sleeping wife that he barely had to reach out before his incorporeal fingertips passed through her lovely cheek. The isolation had been disappointing then; now, it was maddening.

He took to watching the baby, little Clara, as she slept in the crib he had fixed up for her during his final visit to Plover. She was a quiet, peaceful child, with a shock of dark hair and eyes so blue you could dive right into them. He longed to hold her, but settled for standing sentry nearby while her mother kept busy tending to the property, as usual. When he first laid eyes on her, he could feel his heart stretch to bursting to accommodate the flood of love he felt for her. _At least they have that_, he said to no one. _At least they have her._

It was long past dusk one quiet night; Emma was tending to the laundry, Julia to the dishes. Richard had observed in amusement a rather one-sided argument between Paul and Hubert, then followed Tommy upstairs when Julia snapped at her father to give it a rest. His old room was just as he'd left it, sparsely decorated with trinkets and trophies of childhood. He was glad they'd given this room to his surrogate son, as if through it he could forge some connection to the boy before time came between them.

Richard crouched on the floor beside Tommy as the boy commanded his toy soldiers, swelling with an odd mixture of pride and guilt when the leader was addressed as "General Harrow." He reached a hand to the boy's face, terrified of the disappointed that would surely come if he tried and failed to make contact. But he was right there, and wouldn't it be so easy just to brush his cheek with a gentle fingertip, gentle as a summer breeze—

That's when Tommy's eyes widened, and Richard knew that something had changed.


	3. Chapter 2

"So you're…a ghost." Emma could feel the skepticism in her sister-in-law's voice, but surely they were witnessing the same thing.

"I guess so."

For a moment, a tense silence filled a room. Then Julia was rushing forward, arms poised for attack. "I knew you were going to get yourself killed! I knew it!" She swung at him, her arms passing right through him (and yet, Emma noticed with amusement, he flinched with each blow all the same). "You—never—listen—"

"I'm sorry," he choked out, flashing a weak smile at his sister as his wife continued to pummel the air where he should have been. Emma stepped towards them and gently pulled Julia back.

"How can you be so fine with this?" Julia rounded on her, the anger and confusion still emanating from head to foot.

"I don't know what's going on anymore than you do," Emma began, grabbing her hands and fixing her steely eyes on Julia's, "but I know my brother when I see him."

"That's not your brother."

"It's the closest we're gonna get. I'll take it."

All the while, she kept the Richard specter in her peripheral, afraid that if she turned away for a second, he would disappear forever. He just stood there, nervous fingers twisting in his hands, no different from the Richard she remembered aside from his semi-transparence. She could _feel_ that it was him, feel that indefinable connection that they had enjoyed since before either of them could remember, no matter the distance. In the back of her heart, she knew it wasn't quite the same, that it was muted somehow as if transmitted through an old radio; but after spending all these weeks in the hollow stillness of its absence, she welcomed it like a favorite song, comforting no matter the strength of the signal.

When Julia finally conceded with a weak nod, Emma squeezed her hands reassuringly before slowly approaching her brother. She wanted to pull him to her, to transmit her unspoken excitement over his unexpected return through the warmth of her embrace, but she thought better of it. Instead, she merely smiled and said, "It's good to have you home."

* * *

Julia had excused herself to tend to Tommy's bath, a frustrating affair to say the least, what with the distraction down the hall. Tommy kept trying to speed up the process, slipping out of her tenuous grasp and insisting that they return to Richard's side for any number of reasons. In the end, Julia threw her hands up and let the boy scamper front he tub, leaving a soapy trail in his wake.

Richard and Emma were right where she had left them, though Emma had taken a seat in the tiny desk chair. Tommy ran straight to his former caretaker and asked brightly if he would read him a story. The women exchanged a glance that spoke volumes before Emma said sweetly, "Richard has had a long journey to get here. Perhaps he can read to you tomorrow."

"Okay," Tommy groaned, climbing dejectedly into bed.

"Hey—" Richard approached him, crouching beside the bed until he was eye-level with the seven-year-old. "You okay?"

"What took you so long?" he whined in that small, sincere voice that he reserved only for his surrogate father. "I missed you."

"I missed you more. But I'm home now. I'm not going anywhere."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

The boy nodded and rolled over as if on cue. Julia's heart ached as she watched her husband run a shimmering hand over the blanket, hovering just above it with a heartbreaking hesitance, and she wondered how difficult being unable to touch the man she loved would prove to be.

Emma nodded towards the door and she and Julia slipped out, leaving Richard to watch over Tommy like a six foot tall nightlight. They spoke in hushed tones as they crept down the hallway and into Emma's room.

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"Are you telling me you believe all of this?"

Emma leaned over the crib, stroking her sleeping daughter's cheek tenderly. "You saw him as well as I did," she whispered. "What else are we supposed to believe?"

"I don't know." Julia sighed and took a seat on the large bed. "What did you talk about while I was with Tommy?"

Her sister-in-law turned towards her with a smile. "My brother is a man of few words."

"You had to have talked about something."

"Julia—" She sat down beside her, placing a loving arm around her thin, hunched shoulders. "I know you're looking for answers, but I don't have them and neither does he. Let's just wait a while and see what happens when the shock wears off."

Julia nodded and looked into her lovely eyes. The resemblance to her husband was striking; she found it remarkably easy to place her trust and so much more in Emma's capable hands. She lifted her chin towards hers with a shy smile, and—

"I'm—sorry."

She nearly leapt from the bed in surprise: Richard was standing before them, quiet as a mouse. "Richard!" she cried. "How did you—"

"I didn't mean. To interrupt."

He looked at his feet in embarrassment, and she understood exactly what had happened. "You can't just drift through the walls like that! Just because you're a g-ghost doesn't mean you can't knock."

"Julia, I don't think he can—"

"You know what I meant!" She stood quickly and rushed past them in a huff.

She paused in the hallway to collect herself, long enough to hear Emma say gently, "Just give her time." In her mind, she could see him nodding wearily, and suddenly she hated him for making her love him so very much. Perhaps this would all be easier to swallow if she didn't.


End file.
